Responding to criticism the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has established new rules for appointed habeas attorneys in death row cases. The American-Statesman has this report.
The state's highest criminal court, criticized for tolerating shoddy appeals filed on behalf of death row inmates, adopted new rules Monday to begin weeding out attorneys whose work falls below professional standards.
When the rules take effect Friday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will be able to sanction lawyers who submit sloppy, lazy, inferior death-row appeals — a significant shift for the nine-member court.
The court previously had no mechanism in place to identify poorly performing lawyers or to remove them from a court-run list of attorneys eligible to submit, at state or county expense, writs of habeas corpus for death row inmates.
Habeas writs are considered the more important of two appeals given to the condemned in Texas, but a recent Austin American-Statesman review of the appeals system found that the court tolerated lawyers who regularly submitted writs that were incomplete, unintelligible or improperly argued.
The situation has persisted despite an 11-year-old state law requiring the Court of Criminal Appeals to ensure that death row inmates receive competent legal help for their appeals.
Under rules adopted unanimously after extensive behind-the-scenes debate, a majority of judges can remove a lawyer from the court's habeas list for any writ that exhibits "substandard proficiency."
The Court's rules are linked here. The American-Statesman news series on habeas problems is here.
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